soundoff(4 Responses)

sylevine

We Can Proactively Prevent MH370
Tragedies & Enhance Flight Safety & Economy
At the end of World War 2 a number of Air Force veterans got jobs at the FAA. The Air Force had been using military radar for tracking aircraft. They came in and pushed the FAA to enhance their system which was visual at that time. They added Radar like the military. So that the present Air Traffic Control (ATC) and management system came out of the military technology. The airlines, aircraft manufacturer, pilots don’t pay
for the ATC system or GPS. The ATC system uses radar to record aircraft
position and radio to record conversations with the pilots and controllers (the
recordings are not considered private). The tradition ATC infrastructure, has
already been accomplished with technology that came out of the military. The
airlines don't pay for the tracking radars nor the cost of GPS. It is a hole in
the present aviation system that the airlines, aircraft manufacturer and
pilots, out of fear of liability, have put a “private” around the Digital
Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) information being recorded in the aircraft have
prevented that critical safety data from being used in real-time.
In this modern day of lots of International Travel and global economy the digital flight data
recorder data should be telemetered to the ground in real-time and used to
track the aircraft and prevent crashes. It can be done every second. The memory
requirement for all aircraft flying on a single day presently fit on the memory
of a single lap-top computer. Converting to real-time digital flight data
recording can save billions of dollars and make flying safer and nations more
secure (preventing 9/11 alone would have more than paid for the system). We owe
it to all that have died in fatal crashes that could have been prevented to fix
the system and break down the political barrier walls built on the fear of
liability that have allowed for fatal crashes that were preventable (eg: decompression,
rogue piloting, etc.).
You don’t see or hear anyone in the media discussing this even though this is the right way to do total air system recording. I firmly believe that if those former AF ATC
people in 1946 would have had the information and global high bandwidth
communication technology (computers and satellites) that we have today it would
have been already been done. The bandwidth of military satellite communication
systems are over ten times that the ACARS commercial system. The GPS system of
satellites was put up by the military and resisted by the FAA which was pushing
Omega (100 times less accurate than GPS). Luckily for all involved that Air
Force was able to get the GPS system funded and operational as a precision
bombing system without FAA help. Those AF ATC 1946 veterans using radar
dramatically stopped air crashes and we can update the system to a 21st century
Air Traffic Control System (21CATCS).
China has the technology and capability to put an end to this political problem and fix the system. The US, due to the influence of the Airline industry, won't fix the dark age killing system, that out of fear of liability has kept the safety critical DFDR data from being used in real-time. .China can make the DFDR public and used in real-time to proactively prevent crashes and to know an aircraft’s position, velocity and heading every second. Always remember that the remote flight recorder, data streaming black box, can be used in the present autopsy mode but proactively it can also be used to proactively prevent fatal crashes (see: the web site safelander). We owe the fixing of the safety system to all those who have died in needless crashes that could have been prevented by proactively using the digital flight recorder information in real-time.
It should be noted that the US objected to flight data recorders
and that technology came out of Australia and Australia was the first nation to
require flight recorders on carrier aircraft. The aircraft tracking radar came
out of England. It was used to track the German war planes.

Sooner or later, debris from 370 will eventually wash up on some shore.
When it is discovered, we might be able to trace its origin by
analyzing the ocean currents from the moment 370 went missing to when and where
debris washed up! Does this make any sense to you? Also, Zinc Chromate
(a greenish anti-corrosive primer) is used as a permanent coating for
interior and hidden surfaces of Boeing aircraft.With this in mind,
optical filters could be used to identify objects with this particular
coating. Ocean currents and other chaotic phenomena are supposed to be inherently
unpredictable. But mathematicians are finding a method to nature's
madness It seems that it is only fluidic flows within transport barriers that
are less chaotic and more predictable The full Scientific American print article goes
on to discuss how unfeasible it is to model transport barriers for
forecasting, but points out that their identification can be useful in
hindcasting. It's not precise, but by using computer modeling of a chaotic system,
it could narrow it down. This is a classic example of using
probabilities and statistics. Our current technology has been pretty
good at forecasting weather, so let's apply all our knowledge to speed
up the solution to this mystery!

The tragedy of the Malaysian airline brought to mind the outdated black box system. I wish to suggest some improvements. All Black boxes should have a GPS satellite link and radio link back up of the information. Granted this is asking a lot and it will not happen soon but bringing the BB system up to date with computers that can be found when lost and have a back up online and ready seems to be the way to go in the future!